“Political opportunism and demagoguery” are the largest drivers of the regulatory crackdown and federal banking restrictions on US-based cryptocurrency companies,” Jason Weinstein, a partner at Steptoe, said during a panel at Consensus 2023.

U.S. regulators like the SEC and CFTC have always engaged in an “arms race” to reign in the cryptocurrency industry. However, the multi-billion-dollar collapse of crypto exchange FTX has triggered a particularly “tough” wave of crypto regulatory crackdowns, including those on prominent crypto exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase, Weinstein told CoinDesk.